Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [124]
Now, on a bench under a palm tree, Eliza was watching the ball pit through her white-framed sunglasses.
Rooster said, “We’ll say you guys have a show to play back here. Actually, you do.”
“We do?”
“At the Pyramid. When I hang up the phone, I’m gonna set it up.”
“What if they don’t have space?”
“Johnny, Jesus, they always have space. If they don’t, someone else will. We’ll play at fuckin’ Tompkins. Do you know how crazy it is here this summer? The Missin’ Foundation don’t book fuckin’ shows. They’re just showin’ up on the street. There’s a show every night, and our fuckin’ singer is in fuckin’ Paraguay, and I’m here slam dancin’ with myself, waitin’ to croak. Where else you want to be but New York?”
Johnny pictured Rooster up there without him, throwing himself into the pit, looking for someone to spill his blood. “You’re not starting shit with anyone, are you? You know you can’t be getting into fights.”
“Who’s gonna stop me?” Rooster asked. “You?”
Jude waded out of the ball pit and sat down on the bench next to Eliza. Eliza raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sun. Johnny couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“I can’t do both, Roo. I can’t take care of you and the baby, too.”
Now Delph and Kram were drowning Ben in the ball pit. “Quit it, fag!” Their shoes lay in a pile at the edge of the chain-link fence, like the shoes in the hallway of the Krishna temple. Johnny missed the Krishna temple. He missed the smell of the subway, and Blind Jack, and his cats, whom Prudence had promised to take care of. He didn’t want to be on the run anymore. He wasn’t like his mother. He wanted things to be the way they used to be, before his mother disappeared and Teddy died and Eliza got pregnant, before Rooster got sick. He wanted to need no one.
But he’d done what he’d come to do. He’d met Teddy’s dad. He’d cased him out. Call if you need anything else, Ravi had said at the bank as he’d handed over the envelope of cash.
“Just come until the baby,” Rooster said gently. “When will you be able to come, after the baby?”
Again, the operator demanded twenty-five cents.
“Baby, when will you be able to see me, after the baby?”
We need to go back to New York,” Johnny told them.
“Why?” Jude asked. “What’s wrong?”
“We have a show at the Pyramid.”
“What about Cleveland?”
“Cleveland canceled. And you”—he pointed to Eliza—“haven’t seen a doctor in three months. And we need to find a place to live.”
“They just canceled?” Delph said.
“So the tour’s just over,” Kram said.
Eliza said, “I thought we don’t need a doctor.”
“You want me to deliver this kid in the van?” he said, forcing a smile, and even a little laugh.
“What about Di?” Jude asked. “What if we run into her? What if the doctor has to like, report to her?”
“I got it under control, Jude. I talked to a lawyer. He says we’re safe. Di can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do.”
“You talked to a lawyer?” Eliza said. “When?”
“While you guys were eating your Happy Meals. Let’s go.”
The first thing Jude wanted to do when they were back in New York was eat a bean burrito at San Loco, but Eliza wanted to go by her apartment. Not inside. She just wanted to stand on the street and look up at it. “That way I won’t run into her. It’s like, lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. Or like being in the eye of the hurricane—we’re safe there.”
“Be careful,” Johnny warned them before they left Rooster’s, after they unloaded all their stuff at his place.
“Aye-aye,” Eliza said, dragging Jude out the door.
“I don’t like the way he talks to you,” Jude said finally as they boarded the uptown 1 train at Times Square. It was the middle of the day on the last Saturday in July, and about 150 degrees in the train car.
“You mean like he’s my dad?”
“I don’t like the way he treats you, either.” The car wasn’t full, but they took seats side by side. “I don’t like the way he thinks he calls all